Phil Reisman: Sen. Greg Ball plays the victim, but he's the bully

Jan. 10, 2013

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State Sen. Greg Ball says he’s worried about the public’s safety, but judging from a recent spate of email appeals he’s been sending to prospective campaign donors it appears that he’s even more concerned about money.

Ball needs money — and he needs it quickly.

“On January 11, I have a financial disclosure deadline,” he said in one of his appeals. “I must raise $10,000 before the 11th at Midnight so our enemies will know how much resistance they have. Donate now to join me in this fight.”

The “enemies” to whom Ball was referring are the editors of this newspaper.

Ball’s aim is to cash in on a widespread citizen backlash against The Journal News for posting an interactive map linked to the names and addresses of gun-permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Though the permit data are public and available for anyone to see at the county clerk’s office, the newspaper’s decision to release the names and addresses of permit holders has raised a debate about privacy and journalistic ethics.

The concern is real. But this verbal bomb thrower has taken the controversy to a dangerous level by tacitly approving a retaliatory campaign to harass — and even threaten — the newspaper’s employees at their homes.

However skewed, the ostensible idea is to play tit-for-tat against anyone who may draw a paycheck at the newspaper. Included are people who write about gardening, real estate or theater and report on the academic and athletic triumphs of high school students.

One day after The New York Times published a front-page story about all this, Ball crowed that the editors at The Journal News “are now crying uncle” and were getting a well-deserved “taste” of their own medicine. He also claimed in one of his fundraising appeals that he has become a “target” of the newspaper, though he doesn’t bother to explain how.

Ball isn’t a target. He’s a bully — and he’s unleashing the furies against people who, in some cases, do nothing more than lay out the Sudoku puzzle.

It’s well documented that Ball is a self-serving flake and a self-styled reactionary, but he’s not stupid. He has made it a hallmark of his career to trade on fear and paranoia, and this wildfire issue is ready-made for his third-rate brand of politics.

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That a news organization is involved gives him a perfect opportunity to bash for cash.

It’s fitting, too, that his fundraising scheme happens to coincide with the 100th birthday (Wednesday) of Richard Nixon, who was an inveterate hater of the press. Nixon — that is to say the paranoid side of Nixon — lives on in the person of Greg Ball.

Ball says he needs money to “combat the consistent barrage of attacks” that the newspaper has supposedly leveled against him.

There he goes again. He’s the target. He’s the victim. This is coming from a man who has been on Fox News at least four times in the last two weeks and has used that Ball-friendly platform to invite the editors to “kiss my white, Irish behind.”

In this column he was invited to do the same, but the invitation was translated into Gaelic. That may have been a rude retort, but it hardly victimized him. Maybe it hurt his feelings.

Greta Van Susteren, Neil Cavuto and the others at Fox should consider the source the next time they enable Ball in his nutty quest for attention.

They should at least ask him about the dead goat. It’s a Greg Ball classic that one never tires of retelling.

A few years ago, when he was in the Assembly, Ball’s signature issue was illegal aliens, especially undocumented workers from Guatemala. He got a lot of attention for that, too.

And bad guys were out to get him then as well — or so Ball wanted everyone to believe. One day, he called the police to report that a bloody goat corpse with a sign around its neck was left outside his Putnam Lake home. The sign said, “Viva MS-13,” which refers to a Central American gang.

Ball puffed out his chest and told the people of Putnam that death threats from gangsters wouldn’t deter him from carrying out his heroic mission. No way, no how.

Funny thing. The mystery of the dead goat has never been solved. Could this be nothing more than a case of a boy who cried goat?

The saga of the dead goat was recalled the other day by a skeptical observer who took the time to email me. The correspondent pointed out that MS-13 was a Mexican outfit (not Guatemalan) and was “one of the most violent gangs in the world.”

He went on: “If they wanted (Ball) to shut up, they would have left HIM in the driveway and would have grilled the goat for dinner.”

March 4 marks the fourth anniversary of the dead goat story. It should be declared “Dead Goat Day” in honor of the First Amendment.